Rice, a staple food for a large portion of the world population, has been documented to have been cultivated, grown, and consumed for thousands of years. For those living around the Jinzu river in Toyama Prefecture in Japan in the early 1900s, rice and water consumption caused a pollution disease called “Itai-Itai disease”. Bone and join pains and kidney disease were ever increasing around this region of Japan, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that cadmium was suspected as the primary culprit.

Throughout history, women have sought to control their fertility with substances that “regulate” menstruation, terminate pregnancies, or induce labor. Teas, concoctions, and medicinal compounds containing pennyroyal, rue, artemsia, ergot, cohosh, quinine, and lead have caused significant toxicity and death when taken as abortifacients. In this talk we will explore the history of abortifacients from antiquity through modern times, and discuss cases of toxicity through the lens of the women who have utilized these remedies.

This is the story of Dr. Leslie Keeley and his gold cure elixir. His Keeley Institute in a small midwestern town was perhaps the most widely recognized alcohol treatment program in the United States in the 1890s. Although his elixir may have been no more than snake oil his treatment program foreshadowed treatment as we know it today.